If you work in an office building, or really any sort of corporate structure, or if you were born before 1990, you've probably seen the movie Office Space.

You probably also hate how close to real life that stuff actually is.

Let me tell you another story. Don't worry, it's not scary. Sort of.

I was working at a radio station I don't need to name, but it was run on a budget that is probably less than the bigger podcasts have right now. The owners and management were cheap and on the odd occasion that there was any sort of paid lunch or anything even resembling the sort the leftover food was swarmed on by employees like a Biblical plague of locusts.

You might say I'm over-reacting, and maybe I am, but let me explain. It would be one thing if the food was there to be eaten, but it really wasn't. The station didn't even have paper plates or plastic silverware, so if there was a leftover salad, there were people there who would actually use coffee filters as bowls and eat with their fingers.

That was annoying/sad enough, but that wasn't the worst.

One time there was some to-do with the sales department and they bought a bunch of those family-size aluminum containers of Italian food, I think it was penne, but that isn't important I suppose.

This event was on a Thursday. Monday morning I walked into the break area and saw one of my coworkers shovelling some of leftover pasta out of one of the containers and into a coffee filter before popping it into the microwave and walking away.

Here's the kicker.

That was garbage.

When I came in that morning, someone must have decided that it took up too much room in the refrigerator, but instead of taking it outside and throwing it into the dumpster, they balanced it on top of the garbage can, which was too small to actually fit it in.

That means one of two things happened: either she saw it on the garbage and figured it was still good (I still pray that not to be the case) or someone else came in, needed to throw something away and set the container on the counter. At which point she walked in, figured that someone had just taken it out and figured that some 7am pasta was the way to go.

Not only was it four days old, but it had been sitting out for three days, resting on a garbage can overnight, but was still so appealing that it would be scooped out and heated up in a coffee filter for breakfast.

You don't need to hear things to be surrounded by horror.

Why tell you this? Because you've probably seen worse. And that makes me feel better.